


Annoyance, Insults, Strenuous Chases, And Other Things That Begin With Q

by mesdames



Category: James Bond (Movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Gen, Genderswap, Sexism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-01
Updated: 2013-01-14
Packaged: 2017-11-23 07:53:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/619777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mesdames/pseuds/mesdames
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“If this is how you normally dress, Q,” he says, finally approaching, “then I can see why you won’t fly: you know that customs won’t let you in the country with any of your clothes. I had no idea that the chic, art loving girl in the Louis Vuitton skirt was actually a boy.”</p><p>Q spares him a split second of a mildly annoyed look, hands never pausing, before her eyes are back on the screen in front of her. “007, if there were ever a more inappropriate time to be teasing me about having the audacity to wear pants, then I honestly cannot think of it.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> there was a comment suggesting i continue [this](http://archiveofourown.org/works/604101), so i started thinking about _how_ i would do it and where it would go, so now the continuation has eaten my holiday break alive and it's even now in the process of spinning wildly out of control.

The first time Bond sees Q, he nearly dismisses her in the way that he tends to dismiss most well-dressed, slender young people. But, in spite of his prejudices, he’s drawn in by slow degrees as she approaches.

He’s taken first by the smooth, low click of her heels against the tile floor.

Then by the soft rustling of her skirt against bare legs and the coat she’s holding to her chest.

And then the small, thoughtful hum she makes at the paintings on the wall to his back.

It’s almost second nature to flick a glance down the canvas he’s facing to get the full effect of her in his periphery. She’s a good looking girl—because she can be no more than a girl, surely—composed almost entirely of unintentionally graceful lines and held together by an air of blithe indifference. But, for all her girlish aura, her steady gait does not shyly slow to ask if she might join him. She approaches confidently with the stride of someone who has a destination in mind, Bond thinks for a moment that he might get to see her leave as well but then she  _does_  slow. She sits down right next to him—more than close enough to touch—and sets aside her ugly green parka to reveal more dark, alluring lines.

The clean lines of short, unpolished nails.

The soft curve of small breasts beneath her thin black turtleneck.

The outline of a mouse-gun holstered at her thigh.

She reminds him, for an almost painful second, of Vesper.

He pins it on his strange mood that he notices any similarities at all and mentally shakes it off because he has to fight a laugh when she begins to speak. In death he hadn’t had to repress any of his urges, much less the ones to smile or to laugh, and he hadn’t bothered either—not even when it meant a fight—so it’s still a novelty to want to smile and be unable to for entirely social reasons. The fear of offense and the expectation of politeness were both so oppressive after months of freedom and, in that moment, he wants sorely to laugh at this girl, he doesn’t really care who she is or what she wants, he can only think that her quiet pretention will probably be even funnier after he excuses himself. He begins to rise, thinking that the bubble of giddiness in his chest might actually be the beginnings of hysteria, but he’s stopped, with barely any weight on his feet, by a quiet, “ _007_.”

He can’t quite stop his eyes rolling.

Bond’s self-aware enough to realize that he has the ability to be an “aggressively chauvinistic misogynist” (the phase is used in his SIS file twice). He’s lucky to be so aware of this shortcoming because he knows the passive and directly aggressive methods of the alarmingly competent women who surround him on a regular basis. He also knows that this knowledge has stopped him from being eviscerated like some men less fortunate than himself. Which isn’t to say that he’s afraid or that he cares what any woman thinks of him, just that life runs more smoothly when only the enemy is gunning for him. Though he thinks, and would _say_ if he were inclined to be honest with anyone but himself, that he’d gladly stop being a chauvinist even in his down time if women stopped being so stupid and predictable.

(There is, of course, the exception for M, who holds a special place in his life for filling up the void that came after his parents and Kincade. A void he’d sneered at, thinking that he didn’t need the anchor and compass that family provides. He was apparently wrong though, because when she presented him with her cold, proud hand he fell over himself to earn it.)

Presently, though, he’d be damned if this slip of a girl, who is definitely predictable and has only to be proven stupid, could possibly be his new Quartermaster or connected in any way to the SIS. This child, who still has _spots_ and is trying far too hard to prove herself worthy, belongs in a second-tier university, not cluttering up MI6 with her fragile sense of self-worth.

He barely stops himself sighing as he resumes his seat, suddenly very tired of everything that the world has become; a world where petite, fragile looking women can work the jobs of men, where dishonest looking bureaucrats might lurk about for the vaguest of purposes. He doesn’t have much time to be weary though, because the girl continues in the absence of a verbal reply.

“I’m your new Quartermaster,” she says because _of course_ she is.

With what vain hope he had that she might be just a messenger crushed, he sighs an annoyed _you must be joking_.

Apparently she’s not but his weariness vaporizes slowly as they talk. The confidence and sense of strong purpose from her walk have evaporated, but they give way to a flat blandness and lackadaisical indifference that is more than amusing to him. She proves herself to be quick, instead of stupid, able to parry his dry remarks with ease and trade verbal blows with him until he gives in and decides to greet her properly. Not as his equal, but as someone who might deserve some recognition.

The handshake they share is firm and sure instead of the slight bird perching that he usually gets from women, and is accompanied by almost challenging eye contact. He wonders, briefly, if he was merely projecting when he took her analysis of the painting for an analysis of himself, but just as quickly discards the thought, it was intentional if for no reason other than that he doesn’t believe in coincidence.

She gives him a gun that seems ripped from a science fiction novel and a small, utilitarian radio transmitter that belongs in the sixties; he’s almost offended by the practicality of it all but when he comments, she just primly quips at him.

Q leaves him with a bone-dry request to bring the equipment back undamaged (clearly already knowing that he would likely do no such thing) and a grudging respect.

“Brave new world,” he mutters, getting to watch her leave after all.

If nothing else, she is a _very_ attractive girl.


	2. Chapter 2

The second time Bond sees Q might as well be the first—at first glance, he doesn’t even recognize her. He’s had a few days to cleanse his palate with his two favourite types of women: Agent Penny, the strong, competent but still sensual type, and Sévérine, the weak, easily manipulated but still useful type. He forgot all about Q but, he supposes, since everything he thought he knew about her was a dirty lie, he gets to meet her for real now.

He enters Q branch’s area and immediately thinks that he’s in the wrong place. For one, there are only about 20 people in the room and they are operating as a unit so he doubts that there are more lurking elsewhere. He also notes that those are not Q’s clean lines at the head of the room and assumed that she must be somewhere doing something else. The figure currently at the nucleus of Q branch’s little cell has his back to the room, speaking to a girl at his elbow as they watch a wall of several screens, each as incomprehensible as the last.

The girl goes to her computer and the man heading the group starts giving orders and instructions for each screen on the wall, the voice giving commands and thinking aloud is high and clear though definitely deeper than that of the Q he met at the gallery, so Bond doesn’t immediately place the niggling sense of familiarity. It takes him a moment more to recognize her even when she turns around to face what must be Silva’s computer, giving the room her front.

He stares a bit, the familiarity overwhelming but his logical mind thrown by the half transparent wayfarers slipping down her nose, by her breasts being nowhere in evidence, by her hair pinned in the back to look even shorter while leaving an unruly fringe in her face, but it finally clicks into place when she tilts her head and he sees her thin, pink mouth. This time he is in no danger of dismissing her as he does well-dressed young people, mainly because she’s dressed like someone’s 80 year old blind grandfather.

“If this is how you normally dress, Q,” he says, finally approaching, “then I can see why you won’t fly; you know that customs won’t let you in the country with any of your clothes.” The activity of the room doesn’t even pause, but Q’s running commentary of thoughts and directives does, rather suddenly too, as her bespectacled gaze homes in on him. The one brave soul who chuckles a little gets a pointedly blank look and his mouth shuts so quickly his teeth click. When Bond reaches the table where Q is working, she has already resumed her typing and Bond pauses to watch her at it, hypnotized a moment by the rapid _tap-tap-tapp_ ing. “I had no idea that the chic, art loving girl in the Louis Vuitton skirt was actually a boy.”

Q spares him a split second of a mildly annoyed look, hands never once pausing, before her eyes are back on the screen in front of her. “007, if there were ever a more inappropriate time to be teasing me about having the audacity to wear trousers, then I honestly cannot think of it.”

Bond holds up a hand in an amused ‘yes, okay, I meant no harm’ gesture, “I’m here to know what’s on this thing,” he says gesturing at Silva’s computer. When Q nods, going to stand at the table where she began, Bond tries to be as out of the way as he can manage while still keeping an eye on things. Q almost begins thinking out loud again, but this time it’s directed mostly at Bond, explaining everything that’s happening in terms that she thinks he’ll understand. He doesn’t catch about 40 per cent of what comes out of her mouth but still watches her screen idly and comments occasionally.

He checks out completely when she starts throwing around words like ‘obfuscated’ and watches the swirling circles and lines of gibberish that are, apparently, supposed to hold the key to all of this madness. He narrows his eyes.

“Stop,” he says, Q’s steady stream of clattering _tap_ s halts immediately. “Go in on that.”

_Granborough_. Just right there, like it _wants_ to be seen. He thinks for a fraction of a second _that was too easy_ but he tells Q to try it as the pass code anyway and the unintelligible mess on the main screen unfolds.

“Oh look. It’s a map!” She says it with an understated sort of excitement that reminds Bond, annoyingly, of a child. He points out that it’s a map of subterranean London and can practically feel her mind racing at this new information when everything goes to hell. Q barely has the presence of mind to ask, with that same childlike wonder, _what’s going on?_ while Bond is already shooting off as if he’s been fired from a gun. He has some idea what might be going on and he honestly hopes he’s wrong.

But, of course, he’s not. Silva’s cell is open and the guard on duty is dead and, bloody fucking hell, there’s an open hatch leading to God knows where _just there_.

From there, he follows Q’s directions to the letter and, in the back of his mind, is drafting a performance evaluation because it’s so obvious that this is her first time guiding someone in real time on a tight clock. There’s no way that she’s not winging it and hoping for the best. He can practically feel her newness in the annoying little things that hang her up.

It’s the way that she has full, unquestioning faith in her information, telling him to _put his back into it_ when a spanner in the works proves her facts fallible. It’s in her pleased tone when she finds him on the CCTV feed while she’s supposed to be looking for Silva and it’s in that she comments on finding him at all. But it’s most frustratingly in her inability to be decisive while waiting for definitive answers. Having to run after and cling to the back of a moving train was not something that he ever thought that he would have to do when he signed up for this job.

Her little shortcomings would have been endearing if M’s life weren’t depending on swift, accurate action and, as a result, he finds himself frustrated further and further every time she makes a noise unrelated to the mission at hand. It’s almost the same frustration he feels when he’s around a child for any length of time. But she gets the job done and he knows that that’s all that matters on the first time out. His evaluation of her is also padded a bit by the fact that she takes his extracurricular assignment like she’s been waiting for it, the comment about ruining her promising career in espionage notwithstanding.

She plays her part as well as could be expected, and then he forgets her again.


	3. Chapter 3

It takes Bond a while to remember that Q exists in more than an abstract theoretical sense. After the crisis with Silva, he spends weeks—actual _weeks_ —training his body and sharpening his mind and beating back withdrawal with a stick to actually pass his active duty evaluations.

It’s understandable that he couldn’t really be arsed to remember _anything_ , because the training is brutal. More brutal than he was expecting because he honestly hadn’t thought that he was in that bad a shape when he returned to London. A little pain in the shoulder, a little itch under his skin after a week without a fix for his recreational vices, but no worse for wear, he'd thought, not _really_. But, apparently, spending months addicted to pills with traces of uranium in his blood from the shrapnel in his improperly healed bullet wounds had definitely done a number on his physical status. And nursing a good deal of resentment for everything he'd thought was good in his life while drifting, usually drunk, from bed to bed without a purpose was mildly detrimental to his mental health.

The hardest part of his tests wasn’t weaning himself off of the pills or his constantly burning shoulder or even the compulsory _therapy_. It wasn’t that he had to spend his days deep within the new Reagents Park Universal Exports HQ at the training facility and his nights in a hotel _flat hunting_ or, when he did manage to catch a break from training, that Eve was often too busy to flirt with him. The hardest part of those weeks was that even though he very quickly fell into a relationship of camaraderie and mutual respect with the new M, M not only made him retake the tests, but made him take them _seriously_. Mallory told him up front that if he didn’t do as good as, or better than, the new field recruits, he’d be forcibly retired from action.

So he resigned himself to paying the dues that went with being grandfathered into the new MI6. He trained at the shooting range and learned to take the recoil without the excruciating pain that made him want to kill children. He sparred with the new recruits and learned, through the idle gossip between ass beatings, what had happened in his absence. He even talked to a therapist about his childhood home burning to the ground and a physical therapist about the constant dull ache in his shoulder, and he was _honest_ with them.

The same day his M’s will finally made it through the legal obstacle course that comes with such a high station (and more than half the people you will things to being dead), Tanner told him that he’d done better than the best recruit by a comfortable margin. If he were religious at all, Bond would say that the stupid ceramic bulldog Eve delivers to him is congratulations from beyond the grave.

M had always had a honed sense of timing.

Instead of ruminating more on the roof, though, he goes with Eve down to her new office because Mallory has summoned him. They flirt as is their wont and he’s just learned her truly ridiculous surname (Moneypenny? _Honestly_? Why not forego subtlety altogether and call themselves Cashgold?) when he sees Q again, only she’s not Q anymore.

She comes out of M’s office and addresses Bond directly, almost an accusation. “I’m R again.”

He lifts his eyebrows at her innocently, and wonders if she’s read the evaluation he actually did submit on her performance.

It wasn’t an overly positive review. The only points he singled out as particularly helpful were that she was clearly brilliant and hadn’t gotten him killed, despite what seemed to be her best efforts. In his defence, though, there was only so much time any one person can spend flat hunting. So, in his down time, he spent more time than he would have otherwise ruminating on having the disembodied voice of a petite _girl_ in his head telling him to put his back into it while a train barrelled at him. The eval had been partly a joke, partly crippling boredom, and partly complaining about the aches he’d accrued in ways related directly to trains and Q’s competence.

If she’d read it, though, she gives no sign, pulling out her mobile and saying mildly, “M’s with Tanner and _Q_. He said to give them a minute and come back with you.”

“Oh?” he says, raising an eyebrow that Q does not look up to see. “Care to share why?”

“I haven’t a clue,” she replies distractedly. Bond watches her hands on her phone, her long, thin fingers swiping and tapping rapidly, and cannot even fathom what she’s doing. He imagines that she probably controls the world from that phone, pulling strings and toppling governments and opening doors, all from a little square of circuits and plastic and glass. He also imagines that he’s romanticising and simplifying it a bit, that there are probably a million different things required to do any of that, and that she’s probably just texting.

Q’s—because he refuses to call her R—hands stop moving and he looks up to find her watching him interestedly.

He pulls an exaggerated stricken face.

She puts her mobile away and crosses her arms low over her stomach, fixing her stance so that her body is a straight line. The interested expression becomes one that he’s come to associate with her, it’s an infuriating mix that’s too complex and too outwardly _mild_ to be readable.

“I won’t disintegrate into tears if you won’t,” she says blandly.

“I’ll try to contain myself,” he counters and watches her smile derisively almost exclusively with her eyebrows. “Pardon any stray sobs, mind, bureaucratic trivialities do so remind me of my childhood.”

She hums in concurrence, amused. “M told me that I was promoted to Q in the emergency because I was the only one ‘brilliant’ enough to handle Silva properly.” She doesn’t do the air quotes, Bond notes, but it’s probably a close thing, her tone heavily implies both the punctuation and exactly what she thinks of how well she handled Silva. “Apparently the Q before me, who died in the gas explosion, was grooming me to take his place when he retired.” A hand comes up to pinch at the bridge of her nose under her glasses, like this is all suddenly too complicated for 9 in the morning.

Bond sympathizes completely.

“I was demoted because I lack the necessary experience but I’m still co-head of Q branch?” She seems confused and offended by this, like it’s a backhanded compliment she can’t quite parse out. Her voice pitches lower, mimicking either Mallory or Tanner, Bond can’t tell. “‘We don’t think you have the leadership skills necessary to do the job we gave you, so, here, have a babysitter. But we still want you to head our R&D branch, so we’re going to demote you in name and title.’” With a sigh, her stance opens wider and both arms fall to her sides. Her aggravated gaze focussing on Bond, then shifting to where Eve’s head is bent insultingly low over her keyboard, before resting on him again.

She’s as rustled as Bond has ever seen or heard her before, which he thinks is strange because she lead him through a crisis without so much emotion. He feels a little like he’s listening in on something he shouldn’t and throws Eve a look that asks ‘do you feel as intrusive as I do?’

Eve, even though she was apparently done with the situation a moment before, is on hand to meet his gaze and give a look of her own that he reads as, ‘petty office drama is my entire job description now, you can handle this by yourself,’ before ignoring them again to be busy at her computer.

He’s only worked two ops with her and only the most recent one saw them involved directly, but seeing her be so tame in such a domestic scene makes him feel unaccountably old. For a heartbeat, he wants to run away from this boring, 70s office anteroom at top speed, jump through a window, and run on the rooftops just to prove he can, but he acknowledges that impulse as ridiculous and ignores it.

“They wanted to tell me first so I could _absorb it_ and have any meltdowns before you came. Their timing was off though,” Q says derisively, crossing her arms again.

Bond’s eyebrows go up. “ _That_ was a meltdown? I’ve seen cacti more expressive.”

Q looks for a moment like she might say something sharp but settles herself down and instead politely asks, “Why are you here, again?”

“I asked you that not 2 minutes ago,” he says, eyeing her. She continues to stare at him and he shrugs. “I got a summons and nothing else.

She makes a noncommittal hum and uncrosses her arms yet again. Bond almost wants to grab her forearms and physically stop her nervously moving them about. “They sent me out to get you and ‘stretch my legs,’” here she actually does use air quotes and Bond smiles indulgently, “I can’t fathom what they’ve got for the both of _us_.” She gestures between them, encompassing with a wave the vast gulf of difference between them in appearance and station and status and job description. There is quite a bit of difference indeed. “Let’s find out, then, shall we?” She turns and takes the step back to M’s door then stops and looks back, waiting for him to approach before she opens it.

Inside the office, Bond can see M sitting behind his desk, reading something from an open folder, while Tanner and the _new_ new Q stand before him.

“How’s the arm, sir?” Bond asks, entering to stand with Tanner to his left and his Q to the right.

“What?” M says distractedly, then looks up and twists his chair to face them all. “Oh, it’s fine. It’ll get better. It’s all pretty shocking for someone unused to field work, though.”

Bond smiles at the jab because he deserved it. “Good.”

M replaces his reading and closes the folder, the atmosphere stiffens. “007,” he begins again, and it’s not a greeting, he’s jumping right to business, “in light of recent events and the death of our previous Quartermaster, I’d like R—” he nods at his Q—“to handle you exclusively while she is co-head of Q branch.”

Beside him, he sees his Q noticeably start and he can feel his own eyebrow try to make a twitch upward, but he stops it. “I’m to be her practice?” he asks neutrally, knowing that everyone in the room, everyone but his Q, has read the evaluation he submitted.

M rolled his injured shoulder in its sling, straightening his posture, clearly preparing to have to fight Bond on the matter. “Yes, you are to be her practice. We need to make sure that she is completely ready when it is time for her to fully resume her role as Quartermaster.”

The new Q spluttered into existence at Bond’s left, sensing the tension from M, “I’ve just been over this with her and have no objections to her time in Development being cut with training and preparation. As far as I’m concerned, the quicker the proper line of succession can be achieved—”

“I have only one objection,” Bond cut in, bored of this already. “That is, if… _she_ has none?”

All eyes turn to his Q and a corner of her mouth quarks a bit, tucking into her cheek in an utterly endearing way. She looks up at Bond briefly, then M, “I have no objections.”

“Good. What do you want then?” M asks wearily, turning again to Bond.

“I can’t call her R, sir. I’ve already started calling her Q.”

There was a beat of silence while M seemed to be patting himself on the back for the lack of conflict. “Done.”

The new Q stutters a high, “B-b- _but_!” that everyone ignores.

“So, 007,” M says, standing carefully, “Q. Lots to be done,” he tosses down a folder marked _007: TOP SECRET_ in her direction. “Ready to get back to work?”

Q reads the dismissal clearly and retrieves the folder, but returns to Bond’s side instead of leaving straight away. He pockets his hands, feeling smug. “With pleasure, M. With pleasure.”

-*-

When Tanner and… R, he supposes, are gone and the door to M’s offices is firmly shut. Bond resumes his stations as satellite to Eve’s desk, making conversation and flirting. Q loiters for a time, unsure if she should leave or talk with Bond.

“He _gave_ you to me,” she says, after a few minutes of observing Bond’s playful banter with Eve. The word ‘gave’ becomes something unsavoury in her mouth.

Eve laughs brightly, “You’re like a bride changing hands.”

“As long as I get to call you Q, darling,” Bond says, scanning the first few pages of the mission file. There’s a many layered map of a building in central London, the security cameras are marked with red dots. The entire op is 90 per cent being led through blind spots, 10 per cent insider trading, and 100 per cent catered to Q. It’s the kind of textbook training exercise that any handler is given to be put through their paces, any couple of idiots could do it.

Bond is a breath away from being offended by this milk run when, in his periphery, he sees a little smile breaks through Q’s blankness. “I’m glad I got my letter back, if I hadn’t then you’d probably have started calling me something awful like Quincy or Queen or _QT_.”

“QT? The letters ‘Q’ and ‘T’?” Eve snickers, opening a low drawer of her desk and beginning to rummage through it. “That’s absolutely ridiculous, and yet, I wouldn’t put it past him.”

Bond smirks. “I actually do like the sound of that, it rings truer than _Quincy_ does.”

“Or Q’ute, with an apostrophe. That would follow the theme,” Eve adds from where she’s almost bent double in her chair. “With your androgyny tending toward boyish, we could both call you either one.”

Q gives Eve a surprised assessing look when she straightens at her desk, like she’s only just seeing her. “How is this fair? I don’t know either of you well enough for this kind of collusion against me.”

Bond makes a dismissive gesture with the folder, “I’ve just been given to you, we’ll be at the conspiring level in our relationship before you know it.”

“You’re life and equipment are at my mercy, 007,” Q says, plucking the folder from his hands. “It would be a shame if you ever got a faulty gun or I misread a blueprint and you were led into a dead end or off a cliff. Don’t test me.”

Bond grins. “Yes, _ma’am_.”

**Author's Note:**

> this first chapter was basically [this other thing](http://archiveofourown.org/works/604101) revised to fit with the rest of the narrative.
> 
> ETA: i have minimal interest in continuing this even though i have an entire outline for it :(( it might become part of a series if i ever get my head out of the trash


End file.
